`VLORBIK`

Zines, Math Ed, and Labor Unions; since the middle of 2003.

December 6, 2004

Here's Yohshie on Working Class Academics yesterday at Critical Montages.

December 3, 2004

AOL sez they'll give me the next month for free. I can live with that. It's even running pretty smooth. But very likely I'll quit soon anyhow: can't afford it. Meanwhile, a certain JJH has posted a "mirror" of my pages (as of about yesterday) here. If, to my amazed delight, I have any dedicated readers, they should bookmark that mirror in case the present page should suddenly disappear.

Oh, and hey, look here: there's a rally tomorrow at the Statehouse to demand an investigation into fraud in last month's elections in Ohio. Jesse Jackson, Greg Palast. Looks like quite a show.

November 30, 2004

Final entry? I've been complaining recently about how slow AOL runs ... at either workplace and at my girlfriend's dialup, so don't blame my computer ... and it's time to stop paying for service I'm not getting. It's a god-damn shame: I'm very proud of my webpages and the fact that I've had 'em in the same place for so long. It'll probably be a long time before I ever put 'em up again (if ever) ... it's a big project. Some silly sonofabitch fucked up a beautiful thing.

November 23, 2004

Donny Smith (of Dwan and Xerox Debt) has recently moved to Bloomington. He's a real cool head, so treat him right.

November 16, 2004

The U. of MO, KC chapter of AAUP voted last Friday to support votes of no confidence in the University's Chancellor. I care because I've been following their outstanding newsletter for a couple of years.

In other news, the NLRB recently sent out an great big "fuck you" to Americans With Disabilities.

A-and here's my nodding aquaintance Bob Fitrakis on voter suppression and fraud in Ohio.

November 13, 2004

All I want for Christmas: TV-B-Gone. I learned about it from the Invisible Cities weblog yesterday along with this quasi-recent Neal Stephenson interview.

When I tried to post a version of this yesterday, AOL wouldn't let me. Also e-mail and newsgroups are very slow at best. Damn damn damn damn damn.

November 9, 2004

Samuel R. Delany has a new book out; also here's a quasi-recent interview in Blackbird (thanks to Ric and Zvi of delany-list).

Also there's a new Xerox Debt: order immediately.

AOL has been all but completely useless for several days. I'm betting it's the result of some new "upgrade". I may have to fire 'em at long last.

October 30, 2004

Bought a new used car. Never should've made that last repair on the old one (August 10): the latest wound (a "rod") is evidently mortal.

October 27, 2004

I've signed on as a zine reviewer over at www.zinethug.com. My stuff should start appearing around the middle of next month. Meanwhile, I'd better polish up my Zine Reviews Online page (since ZineThug doesn't even appear therein).

October 21, 2004

I went & saw The Corporation yesterday & loved it.

October 19, 2004

Hi, remember me? Here's some meta-coverage of the Million Worker March from Yoshie at Critical Montages.

September 23, 2004

The Chronicle posted a piece about unemployment benefits for adjuncts today. Looks like the link might actually be stable. If this blog entry disappears, it'll be because they started requiring subscriptions or registrations.

September 11, 2004

My summer grades are posted at CSCC; the semester's already on at Capital but my class meets only once a week. Blog posts might become even more sparse for a couple weeks ...

Speaking of posting grades: several hundred person-hours will have been wasted this week on this one campus alone by our criminally stupid new software; moreover, I confidently predict that so far we've only scratched the surface. The good news: the management will probably stop telling us how great it's going to be.

A "data hell" story (1999).
Datatel considers a Datatel user group "a significant threat to its business" (1996).
More along the same lines.
Off on a tangent: Database Debunkings.
See also: my post of July 2.

September 10, 2004

Zine legend Wred Fright was interviewed recently in Utter Trash.

September 6, 2004

Karl Wenclas of th' ULA is blogging.
PS: George's Labor Day Special.

September 3, 2004

Charles Wells (author of The Handbook of Mathematical Discourse) did a blog for a while earlier this year -- entertaining stuff, and even some cryptic crosswords!

September 1, 2004

Arthur Hlavaty spotted this story at Russ Kick's Memory Hole. Quoting Arthur: "The, you should pardon the expression, Justice Department is now protecting the public from seeing Supreme Court decisions."

Papercuts is doing a fine job covering RNC coverage. Also don't miss nyc.indymedia.org.

August 25, 2004

Here's a radio interview with Joe Berry -- who may very well be the midwest's most vital academic-labor leader (see COCAL VI for links to some of his considerable body of work).

August 10, 2004

Fuel pump. Oughta have it back later today (with a little help from my friends). Meanwhile I'm behind on, let's see, everything: grading, laundry, catboxes ... web-browsing ...

August 7, 2004

Never made it to the show last night -- car trouble. Doggone thing's at the shop even now but I presumably won't know till Monday whether it's something I can afford to fix or whether I'm better off just looking for another car altogether ...

August 6, 2004

COCAL VI starts today in Chicago but I'm somehow not there. Bad activist. No commemorative t-shirt. Still planning on Ruby's for tonight, though.

July 30, 2004

I'll very likely go to the Multifest at Ruby Tuesday's a week from tonight. Myke Rock's page has more about it.

July 27, 2004

An interview with zine librarians Jamez Terry and Kelly Costello aired on NPR last weekend. Thanks to NJ Ghost for the link.

July 23, 2004

Reviews of My Pet Goat deleted from Amazon-dot-com.

July 16, 2004

Poopsheet announced last week that they've started a distro. Lotsa cool stuff, way cheap. Vlorbik sez check it out.

In other news, librarian.net (the first blog I ever read regularly) has acquired press credentials to cover the Democratic Convention. This'll probably be about as good as the coverage gets.

Pop Lyrics by Aliens (M. B�rub� & commenters).

AFT reacts to outrageous NLRB ruling.

July 9, 2004

The Philly Zine Fest is this Sunday (July 11).

This recent blog entry about Dylan (by Jimmy, guesting at Old Hag), leads to good stuff.

July 7, 2004

Not since Metrical Feet . . .
Mark Liberman's outstanding discussion of scansion appeared yesterday in Language Log, and cites Rob't Service, Lewis Carroll ... and even a math limerick new to me.

July 3, 2004

One of yesterday's entries in Number 2 Pencil cites this piece on "Math Wars" (by Andrew Wolf in the NY Sun [June 25]) -- which in its turn quotes (the great) Tom Lehrer's "New Math".

Also mediageek has a new issue (hardcopy still unseen by me; thanks to Aj for the pointer). And furthermore, the new Zine World came yesterday. Stand by for updates to my zines list. That is all.

No, wait. Here's "Are Labor Unions Evil?" in American Joblog. That is all.

July 2, 2004

Tomorrow is free comic book day (see also: Comics Worth Reading).

... until morale improves
So now I'm urged to endure trainning (sic; see title bar) in "Colleague" (by Datatel).

". . . Colleague�s foundation is engineered with workflow tools and ease-of-use features that leverage the applications . . ."

-- the object of the game being: outsource adminstrative tasks to faculty so the bosses have more time to count their money. It's obviously not going to work; guess who'll get blamed.

July 1, 2004

The Ohio NWU has launched a new website. I'm not a pro writer but I'm a member anyhow. Long story.

June 29, 2004

My summer classes at Colstate start in an hour.

The ULA credits edrants.com for this reprint of a piece by Yinishye Nasdijj: "PEN Award Winner Lashes Out!".

June 21, 2004

Back in Columbus with the cats. All is well.

"Offensive Language" (at Critical Mass): much to agree with here . . .

June 18, 2004

The Allied Media Con in Bowling Green OH starts today. I've been to all of 'em so far but'll be missing this one. I'm in Minnesota of all things. People really talk like characters in Fargo.

Meanwhile over in alt.zines, one "Ranger West" of High Plains Writers (& formerly of jollyroger.com) has weighed in on the endless -- and almost entirely pointless -- squabble about the ULA (see also: Patrick King's ULA blog).

Oh, and speaking of Clamor (I was, you know -- they sponsor the AMC show): Jessamyn of librarian.net sez (June 17) she's just finished a piece for 'em about "librarian activism and the PATRIOT act".

June 16, 2004

Lazy idle little schemers.
I found this amazing NYU Adjunct Fan Club via Zach (of Problems of Leisure)'s old Education in the Streets pages -- representin str8 outta New Haven.

June 15, 2004

Okay, so my readings on contingent academic labor bookmarks are almost all over a year old. It took me the better part of two hours just to clean out the cruft and I'm darn well taking credit for it. Did I really used to do this kind of thing all the time?

June 14, 2004

Columbus activist Yoshie Furuhashi is blogging at Critical Montages.

June 12, 2004

I've just posted Spring Quarter grades & so am officially on break. I'm doing a road trip next week and so had better not claim to be back to blogging.

Meanwhile, you could do worse than check out John Martin's stuff. I showed him how to do basic HTML & FTP several months ago & he's been pretty busy since then.

Bugmenot: bypass "registration".

April 6, 2004

Well, I skipped out on Saturday's SPACE show because my bank balance was looking sorta low and I'm due to miss a payperiod on account of the break that ended last week. But I was feeling pretty guilty about it until yesterday when my car wouldn't start and I discovered that the alternator's shot. If I'd've spent anything on comics over the weekend ... well, it doesn't bear thinking about, that's all. I suppose I have to count myself lucky: this month's utility checks were ready to mail (but are now safely back in the sorting hat). Barring any further such big financial hassles, I oughta be able to limp through to the 25th OK from here.

March 24, 2004

The Invisible Adjunct announced her retirement yesterday. Dammit. I might never have even started blogging if not for this site. Since over 100 people have already posted their reactions, I'm obviously not the only one to take this as a personal loss ... indeed, a couple of other bloggers cite IA as their direct inspiration.

So the academy chews up and spits out another of its most interesting and dedicated.

Added much later -- is this even allowed? -- Ralph Luker covered this story really well.

March 16, 2004

The quarter's over at CSCC (other than grading) as of right now.

March 15, 2004

The APBU (affiliate of CAUT) went on strike today at Bishop's University (Lennoxville, Quebec).

Updating my Feb. 25th entry -- AUFA (Wolfville, Nova Scotia) has a tentative agreement; classes started up again last week.

March 12, 2004

A thread on academic unions began a few days back at IA.

March 9, 2004

So today I testified at a hearing of the Ohio House Commerce and Labor Committee. I wasn't on the agenda (actually a press release from OFT) because I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it until the last minute.

Anyhow, here's what I said about HB 249 a few months ago.

September 11, 2003
Ohio House Bill No. 249 will (if passed) amend the vile 4117.01 by deleting "Part-time faculty members of an institution of higher education" from the list of those ineligible to petition the State Employment Relations Board for collective bargaining rights. More info at Gongwer and the Ohio Laws pages.

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